


rolling in the air

by sinceregalaxy



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, WandaVision (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Spoilers for WandaVision, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug, but takes place between aou and cacw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 02:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30116118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinceregalaxy/pseuds/sinceregalaxy
Summary: With the twitch of her fingers, she can ignite a conflagration of nightmares in someone else’s head, but somehow she can’t seem to ease the unmanageable blaze in her own.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	rolling in the air

**Author's Note:**

> Well wandavision kind of fucked me up. Thoughts have been on my mind recently so I whipped this up today. I don't even know.

When it’s over, and it’s over much too quickly, they offer her a place to stay. A place to start over, if she wants.

She doesn’t want to. But there isn’t anything she wants that she can have, so she agrees.

They give her a hotel room for a couple weeks while they try to figure out where to put her, and probably what to say about the ex-terrorist joining an American superhero organization. She mostly just lies there on the too soft bed. Doesn’t really sleep and only eats when the room feels like it starts spinning. 

Eventually, someone comes to collect her and drive her to the Avengers facility. They show her to her new room where the walls and the furniture are too gray or too white, and they assure her she is free to come and go as she pleases. She nods, and when they leave she climbs into the still too soft bed to stare at the white ceiling. 

With the twitch of her fingers, she can ignite a conflagration of nightmares in someone else’s head, but somehow she can’t seem to ease the unmanageable blaze in her own.

///

She loses track of the days and weeks she spends alone. Someone leaves meals and clothes and soap outside her door. There’ll be a quiet knock and no one in the hall by the time she opens the door. 

Sometimes she’ll hear voices in the hallway, but can never quite place the person, if they are even people she’d recognize at all. On rare occasions, she can feel the Vision when he passes, or rather she can feel the stone — a calm presence in the corner of her mind. She knows it’s him who brings her food one night, with a polite knock and a “Your dinner, Miss Maximoff” from the other side of the door. 

///

One night, all of her sorrow just boils over the edge in waves, and she lets herself cry for the first time since the day Pietro died. When the last of her tears have fallen, she wraps the comforter around herself tightly, and she sleeps.

In the morning, she wakes up and pulls a fresh shirt and sweatpants out of the closet. She leaves her room, deciding she is tired of scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, and wanders around until she finds a kitchen down the hall. That’s where Natasha finds her eating oatmeal and a banana. If the woman is surprised to see her, she doesn’t show it. They nod at each other.

“You know,” Natasha says after a few moments, grabbing something out of the fridge. “We are having our first Avenger Education and Development session tomorrow, which is just Tony’s term for a glorified team practice. It might be fun, if you want to join.”

She nods and finishes eating her breakfast, before returning to her room without a word. 

There’s that word again, _want_. She still doesn’t know what she wants, or what she should want. But she knows Pietro wouldn’t want to see her wasting away like this. So when a red leather jacket sits next to the breakfast outside her door that morning, she pulls it on and goes to see who she’ll be now that she’s lost everything.

///

The distraction of the team practices, she finds, is just what she needs. Between learning how to be a spy or how to minimize damage or how to work in a team, she can forget about her grief during the day. When she returns to her room at night, she still feels an integral part of her is missing, like her heart was ripped out and never replaced. 

But even alone in her room, she tries to pick up the pieces of herself. About a week after she started going to the practices, she turned on the TV in her room for the first time, and discovered that Tony had uploaded almost everything she could dream of watching to the servers. She avoids anything she had once watched with her family, but there is plenty more to choose from, and she welcomes that distraction too.

But there is no working around the pain when she goes to sleep. She knows didn’t feel this strongly when her parents died. The grief was not so all-consuming as it feels now. Sometimes, she thinks the intensity might be a result of her powers. But maybe it’s just because she has to carry all the mourning on her own this time. 

///

She knows the Vision there before he knocks, can feel him pace outside the door. Almost like he’s nervous. When she opens the door, she has to stop herself from doing a double take. The skin tight bodysuit and golden cape are gone, replaced by baggy jeans and t-shirt that fits him too tightly.

“Miss Maximoff—” he starts.

“Wanda,” she cuts in, and glances down where his shirt reads “Artificial intelligence is no match for human stupidity.” She almost smiles. He catches the direction of her gaze.

“Ah yes, Mr. Stark encourages me to explore human fashion as I see fit, but I’m afraid I don’t quite understand the appeal of irony in clothes,” he says, tugging at the fabric stretched over his skin. She nods, and he just looks down at her oddly.

“I’m sorry, did you need something?”

“Oh right, yes, my apologies. Sam Wilson said ‘if they are going to keep us here like it's a goddamn summer camp then we might as well treat it like one.’ So I am here to inform you that there is an ice cream social occurring in the dining room in ten minutes. That is, if you would like to join.”

“An ice cream party.”

“Yes. It is, as I understand it, a common American social practice.”

She entertains the idea for a moment, eating ice cream with Sam and Colonel Rhodes and Vision. Natasha and Steve might be there too. They all haven’t spoken to her much outside of practice. She knows they’re afraid of her and that they don’t know what to say. And she’s afraid that if she tries to have fun, tries to enjoy herself even just a little, Pietro’s absence will be even more apparent. So she declines. 

“I understand,” Vision says, bowing his head slightly. “Perhaps next time.”

///

After that evening, she notices Vision’s presence much more frequently than before. Often he is pacing back and forth, but sometimes she can feel him just standing there by the door. She wonders why, wonders if his knuckles hover above the door before thinking better of knocking. 

It’s odd, but even more odd is when he seems to pace the hallway on the other side of the room, the side that doesn’t have the door.

She also wonders whether he knows she can feel him out there.

After about a week or two of this, the curiosity gets the best of her. 

“Vision,” she says, barely even looking away from the TV screen.

She hears him phase through the wall. This time, he’s wearing a gray shirt and black sweatpants, which both fit him much better. “I apologize, I don’t mean to intrude,” he says quietly.

“You don’t?”

“Well, yes. I supposed I did intend to come in here.”

“And now?”

“And…” he pauses, like he really didn’t think that far ahead. “Well, whatever is your preference.”

He smiles, and it seems genuine. In his eyes, she still sees the uneasiness that she sees in everyone else, but there is no fear. So she pats the empty side of the bed, and invites him to come sit with her. 

Vision joins her, asks about the show on the TV. She forgets sometimes, especially as intense and as finessed as he is during team practice, that he is new to all of this. As new as she is to this country and to this world without her brother.

And then he brings _it_ up, and she lashes out at him because she doesn’t know what else to do. It feels too personal, too intimate. And the only thing resembling intimacy she’s experienced in the last fifteen years has been with her brother.

But she knows he is only trying to help, so she apologizes and tries to explain, about the wave that keeps pulling her under just as she is about to surface. He just wants to understand, she knows, and he wants to try to help her. And when he explains how he sees it, how his new eyes and unscathed metal heart understand the sorrow everyone else feels, it’s like a whole other wave crashing over her.

Then he laughs, and it is so honest and unexpected that she can’t help but laugh too. She can’t even remember the last time she did that. And so they sit there and watch TV and laugh together, and it almost feels like she’s moving towards calmer waters.

///

Things don’t necessarily get easier after that. She ends each day feeling raw and hollowed out, and when she wakes she always feels like she hasn’t slept enough. But for the first time in longer than she’d like to admit, there is a sense of hope bubbling within her. Like someday she might feel something akin to happiness. She’ll always miss Pietro, and her parents, but she knows she will be okay without them, eventually. 

She had already put a few plants and such in her room, but she begins to pick up a few more things to fill the walls and shelves. The last room she had to herself was the isolation cell at the Hydra base, and the last thing she wants to do is remember that experience. So she tries to make her space something that feels like hers. Something that could feel like home. 

A few of the “social gatherings” pass before she works up to interacting with the other Avengers outside of practice (excluding Vision). The first one she attends is Taco Tuesday. When she walks into the kitchen, they all give her half smiles and nods, but don’t acknowledge her much otherwise. Sitting down with her taco, she begins to think coming was a mistake. But then Vision arrives and starts to talk to her. And slowly, the others begin to ask her questions and joke around with her, no longer walking on eggshells.

Once again, she’s fascinated by the way Vision’s mind must work. The others are all so afraid of her. But during his whole, short life, he has really only known people with superhuman gifts. To him, she must just seem like a regular person. 

It feels nice, to be treated that way. She never truly wanted these powers. 

///

The months begin to go by much more quickly, and as she expected, it gets better everyday. She starts going on missions with the Avengers, and it feels right to be helping people. Every other Thursday she and Natasha find a different restaurant for lunch so she can try all kinds of food she’s never had before. And all of the others who are in and out of the compound will stop to say hello when they see her. 

She still spends most of her time with Vision though. They’ve moved their show watching into the living room, where the TV is so large it might as well be a private movie theater. 

Vision is wonderfully awkward and sweet. A personality all his own, as Stark said. Though he had moved on from fashion, apparently satisfied with Vision’s plain choice of fashion, Tony still wanted him to try as many human things as possible. So even though Vision had access to an enormous breadth of knowledge, he was still intent on experiencing things for himself. 

/// 

In December, he brings an artificial Christmas tree into the dining room, decorating it as she walks in for a snack. 

“Ah Wanda. What do you think?” he asks as he stands proudly next to the tree covered in twinkle lights and red ornaments.

“It’s lovely…”

“But? I know it’s artificial, but Sam has an allergy, so I—“

“No, Vision, it’s perfect. But I’m Jewish, so I don’t celebrate Christmas.”

“Ah I see.” 

The next evening, there is a menorah sitting on the table next to the tree. And though it may already be the third night, she still smiles and feels a warmth blossoming inside her chest. 

///

One night in February, she is lying on her bed painting her nails when he phases through her wall. 

“You really need to stop doing that.”

“Apologies, I’ll try to remember to knock next time.”

She smiles and nods, knowing that he won’t. He sits down gently next to her to observe, careful not to disturb her work. 

“May I try?” he asks after she finishes.

“This?” she replies, surprised. 

“Yes.”

“You want me to paint your nails?”

“Yes, it’s something I haven’t done before so I would like to try.”

She shrugs and sits up to face him. Gently, she pulls one of his hands to rest on her knee and begins to brush the black polish over his synthetic nails. All the while, she can feel his eyes on her face, and she has to work very hard to keep her hands steady. 

“Well, Vis. What do you think?” she asks after she’s finished. He holds both hands up near his face so he can examine his nails more closely. And he is looking at them with such seriousness, like knowing if he likes his nails painted is just as important as anything else, that she has to laugh. 

“What’s so funny?” He looks into her eyes, and their faces are much closer than she thought. 

“You just… you make me laugh.”

He smiles. “I’m going to do my best to take that as a compliment.” Their eyes stay locked for a few more beats, and finally he looks back to his nails. “Well, I’m not certain this look is for me, but I think I need to leave it on for a few more days to get the full experience.”

He never asks her to do it again, but he doesn’t ask her how to remove it either, and the black nail polish stays on until it all chips away. 

///

All too soon, things start to go downhill. Between Lagos and the Accords, the fragile normalcy she had just started to establish begins to deteriorate. It again starts to feel like she is just something the others have to deal with, like they’d be better off without her, like they wish she wasn’t around at all. 

She’s grateful to have Vision as the Avengers begin to fall apart at the seams, but it seems that even he can’t remain impartial.

So when Clint comes for her, and she’s already feeling alone and scared and betrayed, she does the unthinkable and betrays Vision too. She regrets it almost immediately, but when the time comes to prove herself she sets her jaw and clenches her fists. 

She lives with the choices she made. 

///

It isn’t much longer before she finds herself adjusting to a completely new normal. 

It’s a bit easier this time, than when she first came to America with the Avengers. She at least has people she knows and trusts to a certain degree. Sam knows quite a few card games that they teach to Wanda during the long hours they spend inside. When Natasha joins them, they both dye their hair so they can walk around in public a bit without fear of being immediately spotted. 

Steve tries to keep them busy with missions on which they can keep a low profile. It’s much more discrete work and on a much smaller scale than they’re all

used to, but she is glad for something to do. 

They move around a lot, and it reminds her a bit of how she and Pietro lived in between leaving the orphanage and joining Hydra. It isn’t all bad, but she misses her room at the Avengers compound. Misses the consistency and the company. 

She wants Pietro back. She wants her parents. She wants her childhood and she also wants her new home. She wants something that resembles a normal life. She wants to be sitting on a couch watching sitcoms with the only person who has treated her like a human being from the very beginning. 

But still, everything she wants is everything she can’t have. 

///

It takes a few months, but in the middle of the night she feels it, and she shoots straight upright. For a moment she’s afraid she might have dreamed it, but no, it’s there. That hovering, calm presence she’s so used to feeling just outside her room. 

Quickly, she climbs out of bed and throws open the door. The hallway is empty, and the disappointment she feels sits low in her stomach for a moment, but then she sees there’s a note taped to the door. 

_Wanda_ , it begins. 

**Author's Note:**

> All errors are mine. Title from "It's Really Raining" by Alison Sudol.


End file.
